BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

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COGNITION 1)3)

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The acquisition of an ordered and operative understanding of ourselves and our environment.

H. MATURANA thus states the autopoietic view on cognition:"… reality and its cognition had to (i.e. have to) be accepted as a mode of operation of the nervous system as a closed neuronal network" (1979, p.25).

He also writes: "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition" (1980, p.13).

As to "reality", this view may seem somewhat extreme. We should perhaps speak here of "perceive reality".

As to cognition, we seemingly cannot do without some explanation about the autogenesis of such "close neural networks".

Also von FOERSTER presented "… evidence that cognition is a continuously recursive computation of descriptions of reality" (K. WILSON, 1979, p.32).

This amounts to an analogy of the brain as a biological computer. This analogy however should be taken with much care, because the brain, in any case, is obviously not a simple sequential computer and appearently constructs, in some not yet very well understood way, its own recursive algorithms.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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